Did you know that as recently as February 2011 new editions of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Adventures of Tom Sawyer were published with offensive words scrubbed out? The N-word is replaced with “slave” and “Injun” is eradicated.
Read the full story in Publishers Weekly here (January 3, 2011).
Many argue that amending the novels in this way detracts from Twain’s powerful message. Alexandra Petri writes in The Washington Post: “The word is terrible. But it’s a linchpin of this book. What makes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so radical is the fact that in a time when the horror of slavery was still fresh and the specter of inequality hung over the whole country, Mark Twain was still able to use satire to show how wrong it was.”
“In an article published in the Athens Banner-Herald, University of Virginia English professor Stephen Railton says,
“The book belongs in the classroom, but only if teachers and students are able to have a full discussion of how and where the novel challenges racist preconceptions, and also how and where it reinforces them.”
“Huck Finn is a perfect place to talk about race in our society,” he said. “And I remain convinced that classrooms are the best place to have such a conversation, difficult as it is for most of us, which is why I think Huck should be taught.”
Of course, others have been much more enthusiastic–including the cofounders of NewSouth, publisher Suzanne La Rosa and editor-in-chief Randall Williams….
Here’s an excerpt from the Publishers Weekly article that gives an argument for the pro-“whitewash” side:
“What he [the author of this edition] suggested,” said La Rosa, “was that there was a market for a book in which the n-word was switched out for something less hurtful, less controversial. We recognized that some people would say that this was censorship of a kind, but our feeling is that there are plenty of other books out there–all of them, in fact–that faithfully replicate the text, and that this was simply an option for those who were increasingly uncomfortable, as he put it, insisting students read a text which was so incredibly hurtful.”
So what do you think?